Ennui
by curassavica
Summary: 21-year-old Catherine Adams is an agent specializing in the Behavioral Analysis Unit with an increasing dissatisfaction in her job, a decreasing moral code, & some secrets. While investigating a gruesome series of killings, Catherine 'meets' a mysterious man who may prove more crucial to the investigation than she anticipated. ["role reversal"- profiler!Cat, unsub!Reid] RE-UPLOAD.
1. i

**Reupload. I just want to note that I am indeed the original author of this fic and I have not plagiarized it, I merely deleted it due to the fact that I lost all of the documents by virtue of a virus on my computer and I changed my username from what it was when I initially published it. This is entirely rewritten from scratch.**

**Written November 2017.**

**Original Notes:**

**I have so many things to say that I don't know where to start. I guess I'll move ahead to the disclaimer (do people still input obligatory copyright ownership denials on fics anymore? is it still the year 2010?) that I don't own Criminal Minds whatsoever; Jeff Davis is the creator and CBS Corp. are the ones who signal the green light. Now that that's out of the way, let me just profess that finally getting the chance to upload this is a great deal for me because my busy schedule, constant writer's block, and obsessive-compulsive perfectionism deter me from garnering the motivation to write stories, much less publish them. Due to this (and of course, prior to the publishing of this story), I have not published a single fic in general since 2016, I haven't published a multi-chaptered fic (I'm a oneshot-typa-gal because they don't require commitment, but I'm determined to stick to it with this) since 2013, and I haven't published a Criminal Minds fic since 2012. Likewise, I've been watching the show sporadically and out-of-order since about that same time, and my memory is absolutely terrible at retaining information, it's a wonder how I'm able to function in everyday life. So, while I may recall the plot of an episode and who was in it, I may not remember small incidental details like certain quotes and stuff. If I get anything incorrect, please don't hesitate to call me out and I will fix it.**

**As for the fic itself, it's 100% AU and there are references to canon cases but this does not necessarily follow the canon timeline. It's set during the year of season one - 2005, but season two/three aspects are present, such as the mention of certain cases and the arrival/departures of certain characters. It's a Spencer/Catherine ship fic, though I must warn that it's not your typical, as I have an ambivalent way of writing romance/love - particularly if it's between a duo as dynamic as this one. The premise is a 'role reversal' showcasing Spencer as the villain and Cat as the antihero, a concept I was interested in since about September of 2017 and didn't start writing until November.**

**Cat here is a profiler, 'filling' Spencer's nonexistent spot and her personality is a mix of traits she's somewhat acquired from the BAU team members, while maintaining how she is in canon as effortfully as possible. I'm implementing some of Aubrey Plaza's real life personality traits and biography into her as well.**

* * *

_"Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there." — Eric Hoffer_

**November 2005**

The story begins with the memoir of a young man, stood over his work space, performing traditional breathing customs. Inhale, exhale. Trying to ignore the brooding heaviness burrowing beneath his eyelids, and the migraine that was beginning to fester at the left side of his head – to no avail. He rubbed his eyes aggressively and kneaded his gloved fingers through his hair before filling the syringe with what he needed, watching the droplets on the tip of the needle effervesce before making his way toward his captive.

The woman, a midsize tanned brunette in her thirties, was thrashing about in her restraints – chains employed from the ceiling that assisted in keeping her confined to a ramp at the center of the room — pleading for help at every decibel she possibly could until her voice tired out and she physically couldn't feel it anymore. Her only peripheral options were to see his face, keep her eyes closed altogether, or the lamplight overhead her. She chose the tertiary of the three, because even if it did feel as if her vision was being penetrated by a thousand suns, it superseded watching herself be penetrated down there by him. Which she'd been anticipating, though a very small part of her was surprised that he hadn't done it already – perhaps, when she had been passed out – because the man had been relatively taciturn, up until now.

Now, that she'd registered the syringe digging into her hip. She watched the fluid being forced out of its canister and directly into her body, watched his glove-enclosed hand grip her femoral to steady her.

He got up.

"You're going to want to be awake for what I'm about to do to you," he said as he strode somewhere obscured, presumably to retrieve his instruments, the near-fraying edges of his white lab coat fluttering behind him. "…but don't count on it lasting long any time soon."

She trembled so badly at those words she was certain she was going to die of an epileptic seizure first, and his words brought little solace to her mind – if anything, the postpubescent vocal cracks of a developing twenty-something amplified the terror. Someone this young doing something this heinous.

Sounds of drawers being opened and cutlery being fumbled with were reverberant in the room, and a couple of minutes (that she treasured with every fiber of her being) later, he returned, brandishing a serrated blade. She immediately, frighteningly, became transfixed with it, eyeing it as though it were a beloved pet, awaiting its next move.

And when the 'pet' made its way onto her neck and began to claw, the squirms and screams she emitted were fierce. He nearly dropped the knife, clutching his head and covering his ears and gritting his teeth and shutting his eyes as tight as he could – he was sure he'd worsened his eyesight by at least three diopters just by doing that, and he was extremely fortunate he'd had this entire establishment soundproofed – though he wished, in the apex of this mire, that his ears had the same luxury. He began cutting her again, doing so in a manner that would make the piercing screams cease but not so deeply it would cause her to die instantly. He'd avoided nicking her carotid and vertebral arteries for a reason; he needed her to know why this was being done to her, he needed her to know just how much she deserved it.

"Why… are y-you… doing this to me?" she choked out, the pain overbearing and her own voice unrecognizable to her now. "Won't tell… anyone, if you… let me go… please."

"Is that what your daughter said?" he said in a tone level with hers, hatred arrant in his voice. "Tell me," he removed a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to clean the knife with precarious care, "…are those words the exact same ones your daughter used when he– no,_ you–"_ he made his way to an adjacent sink and let the hot water sear every inch of blood off the metal, "–hurt her?" He channeled all of his rage into two slowly reddening fists; yelling wasn't his favorite thing in the world.

"My daugh–" she croaked, the incision rendering her larynx almost unusable. She could feel the blood from her wound dripping down to her midriff, and she knew she didn't have much time left. "I'd never… hurt my daughter… I never _have_ hurt her," She put an accusatory emphasis on that last sentence, one that did what remained of her vocal cords an injustice. The look she aimed at her captor morphed from one of fright to one of recalcitrance.

"Were that profession true, you wouldn't be here right now." He stood over the sink with his head bowed, letting his gelled hair shine in the lamplight, biting his lip beneath his surgical mask to keep from laughing violently at the ridiculous, almost mocking denial. But a chuckle or two managed to spill out in spite. "Also, you're already lying – exuding a false sense of bravery and arrogance in a last-ditch effort to defend yourself isn't necessary," he trekked to his drawer, "nor will it magically save you," he opened it again, "nor will it get you out of here faster." He made as much exaggerative, haphazard noise of the metalware as possible to put her in her place, even if it made him wince. In reality, he methodically scanned the drawer until he located his weapon of choice. Holding a Stanley knife between his fingers, he mused, "I'm going to make sure that you feel a million times worse than your daughter felt, and I'm going to ensure that you know it."

Her expression returned to one of horror as he sauntered toward her, standing atop her body. His eyes being shielded by goggles did nothing to sever her fear, she just didn't want to look into them – obscurities or not. Looking at him made the experience all the more real, and if she was going to die, her last moments alive were to be treasuries in the haven of her mind. She utilized the small amount of energy she had in her neck to turn away from his vengeful gaze; to retreat to her psyche where she was safe.

He trailed the knife down her chest, to her midriff, to her stomach – the tether between it and her tanned skin a mere centimeter – and stopped there. "I could see in your eyes that you were expecting me to rape you."

No answer to that constituted as an affirmative answer to him, the irony in that insight amusing. "Well, you were wrong. Incredibly wrong. Do you know why I haven't done – and won't be doing – that?"

She exerted everything in her willpower to ignore his words.

"Because, I'm not like you."

Maybe if she closed her eyes, she'd slip away faster.

"I'm _nothing_ like you, or that scumbag boyfriend of yours."

It was only a matter of time now.

"…and I pride myself on this fact. I may be seen as an evil person by society for what I'm doing, and I may not have a lot of self-confidence otherwise, but I will forever be grateful that I'm not like you. Unlike you, I don't hurt innocent people–"

_Just get this–_

"–especially not innocent people I'm supposed to love, and nurture, and cherish until death. But you are not innocent, your death is arriving early, and your daughter will be done a huge favor by me ridding not just her, but the rest of the world – of her own personal scum."

_–fucking over with._

The stab to her abdomen was more poised than usual; any traces of excitement or adrenaline in him whatsoever were drained and replaced with tepidity. He, in haste, attributed it to accustomization, even if below the surface, he knew that wasn't really true (obtaining this victim had been a convenient, not to mention impulsive, decision for him anyway). But whatever doctrine there was that laid beneath, he was disinterested in evaluating right now. He just needed to finish this so he could feel the torrid taste of black coffee on his lips before becoming one with his warm, soft bed. He tried not to let his tiredness assail him or compromise his MO.

With that, he sighed, rubbing his eyes with the margin of his collar, acquiescently starting away at something he's been deft at for years, the zeal to see the life drain from her eyes and feel the viscosity of her blood in his hands as she bled out, faint.

Once assured the rueful woman was gone, he retrieved a scalpel from his drawer, opened her mouth, and began administering his postmortem signature.

All he could think of during the entire process was how spent he was. How heavier his eyelids were becoming. How his eyesight was worsening and how his spectacles were doing zilch to assist, how intensifying his headaches were becoming. How his susceptibility to fall asleep standing, walking, or killing was burgeoning in potential by the minute and how it was likely going to get him caught (_that was never going to happen in a million years,_ he'd rationalized, but had he not possessed the mind he had – it could have).

He wondered if any of it was really worth it anymore.

But as much as he wanted to – he couldn't stop. He wasn't anywhere near finished, even after how-many bodies (he could provide the exact count, right now), but at this point, he was straining and he was unsure of how to go on anymore. Too many lives were at risk, and too many repugnant beings like that woman were breathing freely, getting away with every atrocity under the sun – for him to take a break.

It had been his sworn commitment – abstaining from it for any reason would be an admission of failure, not just to himself because he met every expectation he was dispensed, from childhood to now – but to the people he placed himself in surrogacy of the police and judicial system (because God knows they were doing fuck all!), to protect. He didn't want to disappoint them. He didn't want to endanger them further.

And so he swore, as he trudged to the parking lot with three inconsolably heavy garbage bags and inserted each of them into the trunk of his four-door yellow Volvo Amazon and readied the vehicle for a journey through Virginia and D.C. at close to two in the morning –_ no matter how taxing it is, I will not stop until my goal is attained._

* * *

She was driving down D.C.'s busiest stretch of roads late at night, comforted only by the phosphorescence the inner brake lights provided inside the dark car, along with the translucent silence achieved by the radio being off but not by the propels of the heat being elicited from the dashboard vents.

She had to resist the urge to look at her reflection in the rearview mirror; hidden beneath the pallor she'd so successfully hidden with concealer, the tired eyelids she'd veiled with ebony eyeshadow and mascara, the lips she'd bitten to the point of bleeding and scarring masked beneath maroon lipstick, laid ponds of darkness. Pure, unrepentant darkness. It was radiant throughout her body, slow-burning all the way up to her eyes. Yet, she couldn't bring herself to feel bad about it at all, no matter how hard she tried. Given her line of work and the things she dealt with on a regular basis, that type of emotional response wasn't uncommon for people like her after years of being in the field, subjection to so much carnage. It was only uncommon – and alarming, others would consider it to be – if she'd started exhibiting it in the short amount of time she'd been there, and if she'd exhibited it long beforehand. Which she had. She'd just gotten adept at hiding it and putting up façades in its place, to her good fortune.

The one thing she adored about her job was that there was a moratorium in place and it was absolutely stringent that no one attempt to break it, lest a harsh reprimand befall them. She already regarded herself as a master of creating personas for no real reason she'd deduced other than out of sheer boredom and the curiosity about what it was like to live as someone besides herself every day. The unspoken rule that billowed throughout the workplace only further elevated that, filling her with a satisfaction that things as insufficient as drugs and alcohol stopped providing her a long time ago.

She had leverage to put on whatever front she wanted and no one would dare to question her, for risk of their breaking the rule. But, nobody questioned her anyway because she was just that well at playing the part, of course. The role of the girl who's enigmatic in her own right, quiet and withdrawn from others out of shyness and anxiety rather than misanthropy, easily vulnerable, arousing questions from everyone but to the effects of 'what is she so afraid to show', as opposed to 'what is she trying to hide'. A girl who lacked a high self-esteem but tried to retain a confident demeanor with her use of bold makeup and hairstyle looks, and her donning of dark clothing. All of this, of course, was a lie; nothing more than a mask for the grotesque feelings and thoughts that took residence beneath her real face. A lie she'd upheld for a time so long she could actually count on one hand the number of times she had where she wasn't out living it. A lie that, should she fail to uphold, should it ever come to light – her integrity would be shattered. But she needn't worry about that, they were nowhere _near_ getting close to figuring out the real her.

She let the blank expression she'd been adorning the entire drive fall into a self-congratulatory grin, courtesy of her 'team' being clueless dolts that weren't able to see through her deception, in spite of them being self-professed "experts." And she thought, as her eyes took in the voided charcoal shroud of the sky overhead her, I could do anything I wanted to and none of you would ever know it.

But it was only after she smelt the crisp blend of petroleum and cigarette embers, the product of her passing several gas stations within the same block, that the darkness inside her truly began to coil beneath her eyes. The stench was so strong it penetrated deep inside the car, and it gave her a sense of familiarity that she swore she would have thrown up at if she hadn't learnt to keep her shit together a long time in advance. She didn't like referring to it as a 'trigger', but in the end, that was all it boiled down to. It brought unpleasant memories she'd sworn to bury back up to the surface.

Memories of _him_ coming home at late hours of the night, drenched in the smell of sweat and cigarettes and petrol and alcohol and aftershave all at once. The inebriation reverberating in his voice when he angrily, drunkenly, screamed her name. Iron fists attacking her bedroom door, her scrambling to hide anywhere, anyplace; bruises contrasting starkly with her pallid skin when he'd found her, waking up the next morning with remnants of tears in her eyes, fluids on her body, and blood pooling at her nethers. Taking God-knows-how-many showers and arduously scrubbing her body to the point where it seeped red, aching to be clean, aching to live as anybody but herself. Her pleading for her mother to save her before remembering she had no mother to cry to.

_But all of that's over. It ended five years ago. Now, you're an FBI agent,_ she spoke internally to herself as she blinked the irritation in her eyes away and tried to purge the scorching heat from her insides and her veins. _You're an FBI agent with teammates who claim to be at the top but they can't see through the Novelty Wall you're putting up. They don't know the shit you've done, or the shit you're planning to do. Don't drag this out further than it has to be before you really fuck it up for yourself._

She sighed, taking that order in. The memories disappeared, but the rage still lingered. She physically felt her pupils dilate and her eyes felt as though they were going to burn everything in her path. The heat pooling, churning in her stomach certainly wasn't any help. She looked up, she sighed again. She'd been driving for close to an hour and her apartment was just another fifteen minutes away. She could go home, take a long hot shower, prepare a small snack afterwards, then sleep; anything to slowly purge the thoughts augmenting in her head.

Except for the fact she_ couldn't_ sleep, because she'd just end up having nightmares about it – about everything. Ever since that day, they were all that plagued her. And they were so intense, so lurid, so hyperreal in nature she swore she could physically feel everything that transpired in them. Every scratch, every bruise, every unwanted touch, every forceful thrust, every shred of agony.

There was a time she'd actually woken up to a lamp, formerly on the nightstand that adjoined her bed, shattered in pieces all over the floor, a result of her thrashing about in bed and pushing it over the edge. Another time was quite the contrary; she'd woken up immobilized, unable to move her limbs and each time she'd tried, the pain overbore her and she felt like her entire body had been pricked into by burning needles.

She was just so tired. Tired of the nightmares. Tired of how recurrent they were; tired of the heartburn and headaches that plagued her thereafter, tired of constantly seeing him and his pathetic fucking face and letting him delude himself into thinking he had complete control over her and her dreams.

_He wasn't going to win. He will never fucking win, and he will know that damned well real soon._

With that she braked, stopping in front of the café where she'd always gotten her coffee and tea in the mornings. She subdued the pulsating rage for just a few minutes as she stepped out and went inside.

Her eyes scoured, taking in the atmosphere around her; obviously the familiarity was warm and sensual, but the moon's luminescence giving sort of an unspoken solace to the dimly-lit establishment, coupled with the cold air and overall emptiness of the place certainly made it a tad unsettling.

_Sixteen hours really made such a difference._

She glanced at the counter only to find that there was no one behind it. She quirked an eyebrow up. _Was the place closed? If so, why had they left the door open? Was a worker indeed there, and they were just lurking in the back room somewhere?_ She wondered. But impatience trumped suspicion and curiosity, and all that mattered to her was getting her nightly cup of coffee so she could go home. She had a maker at home, but it was tepid in comparison to the drinks here.

Impatiently, she paced about the shop, consoling the little details she would have otherwise paid no mind. The ocher color of the brick walls, the dark wooden flooring, the fragrance of recent breweries, the red lantern lights situated above every table to give it an accentual touch. The oaken bookshelf near the counter that comprised not of real books but of useless three-dollar coffee pamphlets that no one was going to bother actually taking the time out of their day to read. The very attractive man sat in a corner table near the door she didn't remember seeing when she walked in here.

_Wait, what?_

Whirling her head in acknowledgement (and surprise), she focused all of her attention towards him. He was drenched in a brown coat with a white collar peeking out from beneath, the garment just a few shades away from mirroring the color of his hair, which – aside from about a third of it being in his face – was slicked back, glistening fervently in the moonlight. An auburn satchel lay beneath the chair he was in. He was deeply engrossed in a book – apparently one of seven, she took note of the stack present on his table. She looked up to find he was adorned in thin-rimmed eyeglasses, and downward to see he had on some muddy black Converse. A young scholar who wanted everyone to know he was young, she inferred. Her intrigue certainly piqued with that.

An array of questions pervaded her mind — _how did he get in here? When did he get in here, and how long had he been here? What did he do?_ What was so important for him to do that he had to read_ seven_ books in one sitting – _at a rather quick speed,_ she notated as she watched his rapid flipping of pages. She hadn't even realized there had been movement until she blinked and she saw him looking up at her. His dark green eyes, his chiselled jawline, his lips quirked into a measly half-smile of notice. It felt, simultaneously, as if the exchange had lasted both two hours and two seconds as all of a sudden she found herself outside, power-walking back to her car before either of the two could even emit so much as a 'hello'.

When she stepped inside, she rested her arms on the steering wheel and dragged both of her hands through her hair. She never felt more humiliated in her life, and she could count on one finger the number of times she'd felt this degree of embarrassment. Or, more accurately – the degree to which she actually_ gave a fuck_ about it. She debated going back inside and talking to the mysterious man for a microsecond, apologizing to him even – but she opted out of it on the basis that damage had already been done and there was no point in making it worse. She wondered what that man had been thinking both prior to their silent correspondence and following it now.

_Home was just up ahead of this,_ she thought to herself as the keys re-entered the ignition and she headed off toward her destination in a quagmire of defeat. She could skip one night of getting coffee after work; it won't kill her.

Though, she wouldn't have minded if anything else were to.

* * *

The impatience to get inside her apartment the second she'd entered the complex, breathing the familiar aroma of dewy plants and remnants of neighborly barbecues she never bothered to go to – it was all consuming. But nevertheless, she was finally home and she ached to do nothing but change into her night clothes and coop herself up in her fuzzy black comforter, severing the whip-thin cord between herself and the outside world. She didn't even feel all that tired in the sense that her body was going to give out from beneath her if she didn't sleep; the egregiously boring case she had to deal with at work today, followed by all of the extremely false reassurances to families she was forced to not only hear from her coworkers but also spit out herself, tasteless on a tongue so used to lying – left her moreso with a feeling of irritancy instead. The incident at the coffee shop just so happened to bolster that.

But she wasn't one to dwell much on embarrassments like that. She didn't dwell on her cases, either. Her mind and environment would dramatize it for a few minutes and discard it later. That was the routine, and her pride was on the line far too much for that to be compromised. Letting things get to her wasn't something she could afford.

So, she could've forgotten the brief stint that took place tonight with the rage that had preceded, and she could've forgotten the peculiar young lad and let everything be a cloud in the sky set to haze by tomorrow because in her mind, they weren't things that held up to significance.

But that hadn't been the case when she found herself, situated under her fuzzy blanket, adorned in a silken lavender négligée, unable to get to sleep after laying there in the silent and cold darkness for what she felt to be hours. As vomitous as the concept was to her, in the sense that it was extremely uncharacteristic – her only sate for it seemed to be her remembrances of the man, and her dire curiosity about what he was like. She found herself thinking about every intricate detail of him. His dark brown, almost reddish hair. His unnaturally pink lips that were just the right size and shape to do, _say_ whatever they wanted. His eyes that flourished in the moonlight, a provision of simultaneous allure and innocence. Perhaps he was innocent; he was baby-faced and looked to be in his early twenties, although he was dressed as if he had taken a time machine and stepped right out of the seventies. _Hand-me-downs?_ she wondered.

He'd had several books with him, that he'd skimmed through and finished faster than she blinked. Maybe he was a student or an aide at one of the universities nearby? Certainly too young to be a professor, even if he had the look. He seemed to be a very intelligent individual – probably_ was,_ in fact. And if there was any egocentricity in him, she had failed to pick up on it.

She hadn't remained with him long enough to conjure up a full profile (that had the potential to be malleable), but it was his mystique that kept him at the center of her mind. She'd never in her life seen a man like him before – the occasional geek or loner, yeah, but there was something about this man that deviated him from the rest of them – she just couldn't pinpoint what exactly. Well, not right now, at least. The triteness in the fact she did this for a living every single day had kicked in, successfully making her tired.

With that, she allowed her own curiosity and the unfinished profile to lull her to sleep.

_And to her surprise (even in her dreams), she didn't have a single nightmare._


	2. ii

She woke up with a headache, much to her disdain. The analogue clock read 6:15, she noted after taking a quick glance at it. She had more than enough time to get ready for work and ensure an early arrival; her headache serving as the only deterrent to her remaining in her bed for just a couple of more minutes.

Gritting her teeth and grunting in annoyance, she begrudgingly gave in, hastily – and moodily – getting up from her bed (the dumbest decision she's ever made in her two decades of existence, she concluded, because she could feel the blood in her brain churning and making everything worse the second she stood up), and trotting towards her bathroom. She grabbed a plastic cup she usually kept on the counter for times like this, turned on the faucet and watched the water fill the cup with a gaunt look in her eyes. She opened her medicine cabinet without even looking at it, the near-empty bottle of acetaminophen and the two pills she popped out feeling like banalities in her hand.

Downing the cup of water in one sip, she was sure the pills would make her headache dissipate by the time she arrived to work. But that wasn't always the case for her, though. She just had to weigh her options on a tightrope and get lucky, because if there was anything she needed so importantly right now – it was luck.

She threw her clothes into the laundry basket near her bathroom door, switched on the shower faucet and stepped inside, and as the water draped down her hair and her body, all she could think about was her …unnatural excitement to go to work today for one reason and one reason only.

Just hours prior to the coffee shop ordeal and its preceding rage, she'd gotten a lead.

A fucking_ lead._

For the first time in what felt like_ years._

Ecstasy was an understatement. The genuine burst of joy corrupted her – so much so, she concluded that were she in dispossession of her mindfulness, she probably would have slipped in the shower and cracked her skull from all of the excitement. Nevertheless, her celebration was emotional and mental if not physical, and she was happy to revel in it for as long as she could – that is, until the telltale ring of her cellphone halted her rejoice.

She turned off the valve, quickly dried herself, retrieved the robe she'd just discarded and donned it, scurrying out of the bathroom and making a beeline toward her phone before it could ring a second time and worsen her headache. She declined the call and opted to send a text message instead.

**6:42AM**

**From: Me**

**To: Hotch**

**in the shower, sorry, can't call.** (Habitual lie, but it wasn't that big of a deal. She just didn't think her aching temple could withstand hearing the king of stress-inducing voices in her ear right now.) **do we have a case?**

Her boss, Hotchner – nicknamed and known colloquially as, Hotch – responded:

**6:44AM**

**To: Me**

**From: Hotch**

**Yes. Be here at 8 sharp and try to bring coffee if you can. It's… really bad. Really, really bad.**

That brought her eyebrows to ascendancy and her eyes close to spontaneously popping out of their sockets in curiosity. She wouldn't find out about the case until briefing, which made the suspense all the more alluring to her, so she decided not to pressure Hotch about it.

**6:47AM**

**From: Me**

**To: Hotch**

**duly noted. how does everyone like their coffee again? all i remember is that you, rossi, and morgan want all of yours as blackened as inhumanly possible. i don't understand the three of you in the slightest.**

**6:49AM**

**From: Hotch**

**To: Me**

**JJ likes hers iced, Emily likes hers sweetened and Penelope vacillates between having a mocha and frappuccino. It's frappe day today. Also, it's a pact.**

**6:50AM**

**From: Me**

**To: Hotch**

**right, alpha males gotta stick together. are we taking the jet?**

**6:52AM**

**From: Hotch**

**To: Me**

**No, just the SUV will suffice. It's in Alexandria.**

**6:54AM**

**From: Me**

**To: Hotch**

**how disappointing. i was really hoping for a nice, calm, serene morning of turbulence.**

**6:56AM**

**From: Hotch**

**To: Me**

**You're not usually... witty, like this.**

That statement served as a teeny crack to her barriers, and got her to produce a chortle as a result. Her superior was just full of surprises this morning, wasn't he?

**6:57AM**

**From: Me**

**To: Hotch**

**i am, you guys just don't pay attention to it and that's one of the reasons why it's a rarity. if you're asking why i don't fasten that to my daily exterior – it's simple. i'm not a formidable person. Within her occupation was what she didn't add.**

**6:59AM**

**From: Hotch**

**To: Me**

**We do notice, we just have trouble comprehending it sometimes.**

**7:01AM**

**From: Hotch**

**To: Me**

**You could be, if you wanted to. You have the potential. You're diligent, intuitive, studious, you face so much hardship at work and yet you're still so selfless. It just feels like there should be more, but it simultaneously feels as though there is more beneath you and you've just been not letting it show. I don't know. You just might be my most complex team member, Kate.**

She smirked, a Chelsea grin she wished could have been observed by others. For a second, she thought about letting her true thoughts and motives seep through, proffering a look into the mind of the agent they presumed they knew very well. And revelling in the sheer shock and betrayal on their faces thereafter; letting Hotch eat his words in fruition. But she knew it was far too early for that to happen – at least for now; she'd have to go to the bullpen, do what she needed to, and do a triple-check to be sure. So her thoughts faded, rerouting her to continue the conversation with her boss.

**7:03AM**

**To: Hotch**

**From: Me**

**so… who wrote the intraprofessional profiling rule again?**

**7:04AM**

**To: Me**

**From: Hotch**

**It was probably Gideon.**

If there was any tension in her at the mention of that name, even through text, she kept it restrained. Ferociously. Including whilst she was alone. She tried to not let passed memories buoy up to the surface as she dressed herself.

**7:06AM**

**To: Hotch**

**From: Me**

**probably. i have to get dressed now.** _More lies._

**7:07AM**

**To: Me**

**From: Hotch**

**Alright. I don't want to hinder you. See you in 30.**

Considering it was a Wednesday morning, he wanted her to grab six additional coffees, and her condo was almost an hour away from Quantico, she scoffed at the message – playfully, of course. She couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't take longer than that. She wondered, though, as she applied her usual smokey eye and rose lipstick, fount to a repertoire of reds – how horrifying was this case they were heading to investigate, to the point where Hotch had needed a distraction, as he'd implicitly expressed in his messages? It wasn't as if she texted Hotch for leisure purposes on a regular basis anyway.

She let the odds of it cycle in her head, balancing the vicissitudes between exciting cases – à la, killers who rip their victims' teeth or eyes out by hand, a cannibal, or necrophiliac – and the dull ones that didn't warrant her unit's acknowledgement because the locals were utterly terrible at doing their jobs – your everyday, average white-collar crime. Not that she had done it often to start with, but, she stopped subconsciously exhibiting concern for the fact she would surge with excitement (with care to hide it accordingly, of course) whenever they were called away on cases resembling the former, and annoyance whenever she had to deal with cases like the latter. A near-desperate want to see gore and dead bodies etched into the recesses of her brain, giving her a high that no opioid could and presenting itself in the form of hypotheses. Theories. Which cases were 'good' and which ones were 'bad', in her terms.

Admittedly, it was all a game she played daily on her trips to work. A game she enjoyed indulging in more than what was considered societally acceptable – it gave her all the windows in the world for her fantasies. Inspiration, should she enact them. Challenges, should they present themselves; challenges she had accepted and would accept in the near-future with great hubris.

_So,_ she thought, feeling her headache dissolve and and her eagerness erect as she finalized herself, locking her apartment door as she stepped out towards her car, _which was it this time?_

Pulling out of the parking lot and onto the motorway, she let her mind diverge from the probabilities of the case, to the strange man she'd encountered the night before. She was never one to particularly pay attention to people (in spite of the fact that literally served as the defining prerequisite of her job) unless she was really interested in them, and_ interested_ in this young man she was. She was (though she would never admit it, not even internally; her pride was too prominent even in solitude, and compulsive, for her to do that) a teensy bit hopeful he would return to the coffee shop, since it was her regular spot, and hopefully his as well. If he didn't... well, she had FBI resources at her disposal. She needed to know who he was and all there was to know about him. Not why he dressed like that, but why he suited it so well. Why he was skillful enough to read seven books faster than she could breathe. What he was doing at an assumably empty coffee shop so late at night. All of those were so... inconsequential, or they would be, if it were anybody else. But it all captivated her. _He_ captivated her. She needed to study him, profile him, find out what his idiosyncrasies were so she could determine whether or not she was crazy for developing a fixation on some guy who could just end up being average.

But there was no way he could be average. A guy like that had to have possessed some eccentricities, even if they were underlying, and she was determined to find them right after she found _him._ Along the drive to the coffee shop that preceded the drive to Quantico, Virginia, she thought about her brief, but incomplete, profile of the man from the previous night, and decided to kill time calibrating it.

_White male, early twenties. Hair gelled in an attempt to look nice, but it didn't seem as though he does that often or is used to it, so he was overcompensating (and may do this occasionally, as opposed to routinely). He was perfectly content sitting alone in an empty coffee shop, reading piles of books at a rather fast pace for as long as he wanted, which says that not only is he scholastic, he's accustomed to isolation and actually considers it part of his routine. He's also youthful in his adornment of Converse, a brand popular with juveniles, which says that he wants to preserve a piece of his childhood without appearing immature — actually (deliberately) achieving the opposite by dressing much older than he actually is. All of these factors, when coalesced, indicate either a strict religious upbringing or an abusive/neglectful childhood, or both. Trusts no one but himself as a result of these circumstances and that, is perhaps, why he isolates. Almost certainly doesn't open up easily. Simultaneous isolation and overcompensation may mean he works with people, and gets on well with them, but he closes himself off from them. Likely somewhere there are a lot of books, since those appear to be his solace. Somewhere adolescents are present, and possibly predominant, due to his Converse and the fact they appeared worn-out and dirty from repeated wear; they probably weren't frowned upon in his work environment. A university, high school, someplace institutional in general, maybe. The smile he gave, while halfhearted, wasn't one of obligatory acknowledgement, or passive-aggressive politeness, but awkwardness. He's not intimidating in the slightest. _As though she were characterized in a state of contagion, that last one caused her to smile back.

She had just finished the profile when she pulled into the drive-through of the coffee shop, unsurprised that the mystery man was nowhere to be seen when her car had passed the shop's front, but she allowed her indifference, her ability to improvise, her excitement over more important matters, and her gratitude at the fact that she was the first to make it into the drive-through before it had the chance to become an agonizingly long queue ensurant of her lateness, to gleam as she took orders for herself and six other people.

Those six people were waiting for her behind the glass doors of the bullpen lobbying the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI, but they were surprised to see her staggering with their coffees encased in one of those impractical cardboard cup holders, treading precariously on the verge of spillage, earlier than they'd expected (ten minutes, to be precise). She quickly placed the holders on a nearby desk before that could happen and allowed her teammates to cede from everything they were doing and come collect their orders; she'd had the courtesy of labelling everybody's cups. "I need to talk to Hotch for a second," she contended to no one in particular. She grabbed her own coffee and Hotch's own, and made the scamperlike trek past the team towards her boss's office.

"Good morning, Kate." Hotch's monotonous — yet, soft — voice spoke when she knocked on the door. "You're early."

"Guess I am," she shrugged, placing her boss's coffee on his desk. "I was first in the drive-through for once, it's a miracle."

"We're going to _need_ miracles throughout this entire case," Hotch raked a calloused hand through his jet-black hair, and she could tell he was trying to maintain his composure. He hadn't picked up his drink once. "I almost didn't want to take it. This is one of the sickest UnSubs we've had in a while."

"We have to, Hotch. You know we have to, and you also know that we'll be able to solve it in time. Everything will be okay." She long ago stopped reacting at how she could get phrases like that out so flawlessly, without a hint of edge in her voice, without a single microexpression to accompany it that gave any indication it was false. Her experience, while having been attained through dubious means — paid off. "How bad is it?"

"Ten minutes until briefing. You'll see then."

She nodded without complaint. But she could affirm in his eyes that he wanted to advise her first, because he perceived her as the 'bravest' out of everyone on the team, completely unaware that the bravery was more deliberate than he thought; bred from a treacherous amalgam of research, foreknowledge, desensitivity, and observational skills.

She took a slow stroll out of Hotch's office, applying that same speed to the sips of her coffee and watched the team from the railing overlooking the atrium, indulged in their cups, happily conversing amongst themselves in a rite of salvation before they were to spend an inordinate amount of time on a purportedly grisly case. She observed them, bereft, as if she were expecting them to bring some substance to the void in her eyes; expecting them to break the barrier she's built between herself and them, or acknowledge that there was even a barrier in place. But they didn't, they never did, she knew they never would, and that was alright, because it was not what she wanted.

She was left thinking, reflecting. About _them._

Aaron Hotchner, stern Unit Chief, who took on the mononym Hotch to prove to his subordinates that he wasn't that austere, that he had a personality beyond the stone-face he put on at work as both an obligation and a natural reaction to an upbringing that suggested punishment were he to display otherwise (He'd let a fragment of his childhood slip during a faux-empathetic engagement with a prior UnSub). None of that was to be mistaken for subservience, however; he was a former prosecutor with a high success rate and a golden voice fit for arguments, he was not on the receiving end of intimidation (nor was she, at her core, intimidated by him when she first arrived - though, she'd feigned it), and he was more than willing to break the rules if they were in any way disadvantageous to his team. An all-American family man whose compassion and protectiveness — that he also had never been on the receiving end of, and she'd suspected he didn't know much about the depths of love beyond the 'traditional' tenets that society funnelled down his throat — was seldom alight but still there, a beacon of firmness and nobility by all means.

Derek Morgan, resident pseudo-Lothario. Derek mirrored her, in a paradoxical way. While on the moral greyscale she would fall a deep charcoal, he would be more silver, despite how he presented himself to be: an unrelenting womanizer, hedonist who eats hearts for breakfast. Beneath that, though, was not a dark side like she, but rather, a heart of gold, tenderness towards his friends that he was more comfortable showing in settings where it was just them. She knew his ambition and determination weren't a front; those came naturally to him and he was effective at utilising them when they were needed. He more-so paralleled her in the mistrust of others, the irrationality, having to suppress his true personality and build a false one as compensation for passed abuse (sexually abused by his mentor slash ersatz-stepfather following his real father's death, that he'd witnessed — who removed all trace of his assault-laced juvenile record and got him a scholarship to keep him silent, later attempting to frame him for murder in order to cover it up, she'd found out). Compensation for what he never got to be as a result of his childhood, then steady consolidation thereof. Accompanying that was mutiny; a natural teenage response that'd been exacerbated so much by abuse, it had the misfortune of appearing in his adulthood as well. One of his authority figures had been savagely ripped away from him in front of his own eyes and the other, who was supposed to rid him of his pain, chose instead to capitalize off of it and further harm him; his future in the palm of that man's hand to be ripped away just like his father at any time, were he not compliant. So, authority figures necessitated no trust from him, neither did any God, and that was well-deserved.

It haunted her how similar, yet contrastive, the two of them were.

Emily Prentiss, diplomacy in every respect. If she were honest, she didn't enjoy profiling Emily much; caution was all she harbored towards Emily, hostility having been its precedent. The day the woman first arrived, she had bled grandeur in every aspect, but was in reality, drenched in overcompensation with a barrier. Emily was also a self-professed 'compartmentalizer'. All of these factors, interwoven, typical of an isolated childhood. She was unsurprised to find out Emily's mother — an ambassador whose relationship with her daughter was rife with scorn — had worked with Hotch, as she believed Emily's and his growths, were relative. Elegance at the surface, Hell behind closed doors. Compulsory savoir faire produced as a result; either of them never able to truly find peace unless freed from their emotional chains.

What had surprised her, however, after further research she'd conducted on Emily — absentee father, lived around the world and never remained in the same place for a long time (which, combined with simultaneous suffocation and neglect by her mother, gave her a perfect opportunity to curate new personas) — was how corresponding her own development was with Emily's. Emily was a couple of psychological castes away from being exactly like her, and whilst this discovery had provided a lot of explanation, it also brought forth more rage towards the woman. And because she'd learnt she was more comparative to Emily than she thought, she figured the disdain had been mutual, and gradually, Emily and she had started being 'nice' to one another, but she refused to be overtly reciprocal. Emily didn't cease civility with her despite this; Emily valued her own image too much. _Like she did._ She couldn't allow her plans to be compromised, or her façade to be shattered, by someone whose state of mind bordered her own and could easily deduce, so she made it a custom to avoid Emily at all costs, no matter how innocuous the cost.

Jennifer Jareau and Penelope Garcia, two remarkable young blondes whom she had almost come to like in an instant, mainly because neither of them were profilers who had the credentials to look beneath her exterior — not that she wanted them to in the first place. The former, their communications liaison for missing persons; relegated to the task of holding press conferences as a means to spill out the same pleas of the missing person's safe return at the family's behest, with the eye-rolling intent of the UnSub maybe watching, experiencing a sudden change of heart, and relenting. It was robotic. Jennifer — 'JJ', the petite blonde preferred — was robotic, and not in a way that had one wondering if there was more beneath the mask because there was truly nothing there. The latter, their 'perky' technical analyst who was vibrant in clothing and in prose and had an office full of stuffed animals that served as a consolation for her hours spent in darkness poring over gruesome crime scene photos. Admittedly, profiling the non-profilers of the team didn't give her as much satisfaction; they were immune to the no-intraprofessional-profiling rule, as JJ was drab in personality, if not lacking one outright, and Penelope was an obnoxiously open book incapable of closing, extremely predictable in her actions. Maybe they, too, put up walls, but they were so fragile and so patent that they were pretty much useless in efficacy. There was nothing to profile about them, really. Profiling was alluring because it required mystery, and excitement, and anticipation, and neither of these women were capable of that, but they sure as hell made good drinking buddies.

David Rossi, the new-old addition, was at the tip of her ire, convinced that he had no defining characteristics beyond 'stereotypical Italian mobster', 'spoilt brat', and 'de facto narcissist'. But he did have traits, everyone did, she was just intentionally avoiding glossing over them. The successor to one Jason Gideon, with whom he was accredited as the Unit's founding father, she by absolutely no means liked the man. She'd actually, for once, allowed her animosity to be shown at his 'retirement from retirement', and she'd been awestruck at herself over the fact she'd watched Hotch fall for it and construe it as grief over Gideon. The hatred she held for Rossi was comparable to the one she'd held towards Emily in the beginning; though, unlike Emily, it wasn't due to some subconscious self-hatred — she couldn't even capacitate herself to feel that, really — it was because he posed the biggest threat to her plans (pioneer of behavioral analysis, he'd have gotten them in five seconds flat). He'd been a hindrance to them since his arrival, and that infuriated her. But she knew better than to let slip her barrier, so, she let him believe that she'd just been recuperating from the loss of her old mentor, and her lashing out was done in refusal to let new people in as a result of abandonment & attachment issues brought on by said man, all the while making sure to let him know implicitly that she didn't trust him. It was perfect. Deceiving David Rossi was a challenge more satisfactory than deceiving the others; one she haughtily accepted, a feat she was determined with all of her might to accomplish.

_King of profiling, along with his entire unit, outsmarted by rookie of close to two years,_ the mental headline read. She could see it. She longed for the time an opportunity would choose to present itself, to which she would grip with an iron fist.

Bending her upper body forward and leaning her forearms against the banister, she grinned to herself and watched her team, her _inferiors_ laugh among each other contentedly again, seven minutes before briefing. This was a true family in every sense of the word.

A family she, special agent Catherine Adams, was not a part of, and never wanted to be.

A family whose metaphorical life insurance she was prepared to swindle for all she's got, forging herself as beneficiary.

* * *

**author's note: cat's nickname is kate instead of cat for a reason. she's still the same cat, and she'll be referred to as such later on, so don't worry.**


End file.
